Thread: Ego Death

Originally Posted by Speesh

The way I see it, ego death isn't an elimination of individual consciousness, but a shattering of our ability to put on cognitive masks to deal with the world and ourselves. It is without these processes that our unfiltered individualism shines forth. That's why creativity, something distinctly personal, is known to spike during experiences of ego-death.

i agree. i dont think the ego is the individual consciousness of a person, just the mask they use in order to fit into this mad world. beyond the ego death experience there is still some kind of individuality, just without all the fakeness and barriers the ego puts up to survive

i guess once you get past the ego you find your true spirit self which is able to understand how we are all connected while still keeping a sense of self

[QUOTE=JackALope2323;1516281]I can see why it's a good thing to experience, but I can also see why it's a good thing to maintain our individuality.

I think that the benefits of maintaining our individuality greatly exceed the benefits of achieving universal ego-death. Especially when the means to the universal ego-death involve forcing ego-death on all living things, in order to achieve universal utopia, whether people want it or not.

But, you know, that's just like, my opinion, man.

I have to agree with DuB, though. Correlation =/= Causation. Unfortunately, I think it would be very difficult to achieve scientific accuracy in an ego-death experiment to see if ego-death does indeed cause euphoria.

Even if it did, though, who would want to experience perpetual euphoria? Shit would get boring, after a while.[/QUOTE]

haha yeah well ive always guessed that is why we are here in the first place, but it would be good to have a go on the never ending bliss again eh?

Originally Posted by really

lol, leave him be.

Ok if you see the benefits of meditation then yeah, that's fine. I was mainly referring to your second and final paragraphs, but anyway... Not that society would suddenly prefer meditation either. Just that it was more 'natural', if you know what I mean.

To be honest, I really haven't read or heard much about 'Salvia', can you tell me about it? It's to be smoked?

yeah smoking salvia is about the harshest it gets in terms of psychadelics. you will be immediately taken from your body into the astral realm. of course this is a great thing if you are experienced and know how to control your fear (i dont). however if you have no experience it could easily bring on a really intense bad trip, which can also have its benefits but theres no point scaring yourself senseless because it will put you off further study

although when i tried it in a dream it was awesome and completely lacking in fear or paranoia

I personally dont see anything wrong with it.

I would assume that with a one universal consciousness, the parties and adventures would increase, more friends = more parties?

From the viewpoint of "Oneness", it doesnt matter if you kill your ego or dont, you already are one with everything, it is only the realization that needs to occur. So basically, this sense of "individualism" is an illusion. Some people like to see things the way they really are, not illusions.

But I think that the spiritual benefits of ego-death are what should be looked at and praised.

Hahahaha nice post OP!! I think your words just caused instant ego-death to those ego-death proponents.. you rule very strong argumentation you got there..

Originally Posted by elucid

But I think that the spiritual benefits of ego-death are what should be looked at and praised.

Exactly.

Hmmm, The child above me confuses me. What's wrong with ego-death in the first place? Maybe they're to attached to their fake self-image. It's sad really.

There is nothing wrong with ego-death, but you will always have a self-image. Sure this self-image can be fake, and it might be good to kill it and change it, but in the end, you will always have an ego, it is what you are. You can kill the idea that you have of yourself, sure, but there is nothing difficult or special about this. As a matter of fact, most people their ego's are already dead, people do not think for themself, most people just follow the crowd. If you call the self-image fake, then you just said yourself, that they do not have a true self-image, they do not have a true ego, so their ego is already dead.

The way I see it, is that we need to learn to master our ego. But the way spirituallity talks about ego-death is very confusing because our ego is basically the only thing we have. Our ego is the essence of us, it is our personality. Our ego is what divides us from the rest. Without our ego, we are nothing. I do agree, that the ego can be destructive, but it can also be very constructive if we learn to master it.

Originally Posted by ChaybaChayba

There is nothing wrong with ego-death, but you will always have a self-image. Sure this self-image can be fake, and it might be good to kill it and change it, but in the end, you will always have an ego, it is what you are. You can kill the idea that you have of yourself, sure, but there is nothing difficult or special about this. As a matter of fact, most people their ego's are already dead, people do not think for themself, most people just follow the crowd. If you call the self-image fake, then you just said yourself, that they do not have a true self-image, they do not have a true ego, so their ego is already dead.

The way I see it, is that we need to learn to master our ego. But the way spirituallity talks about ego-death is very confusing because our ego is basically the only thing we have. Our ego is the essence of us, it is our personality. Our ego is what divides us from the rest. Without our ego, we are nothing. I do agree, that the ego can be destructive, but it can also be very constructive if we learn to master it.

Exactly. We need to master it. Having an ego can go both ways. - I don't think we should go without having one, but I do think we should knock it down every once in a while, if not frequently. My method, ego death.

Doesn't ego mean "self"?

ChaybaChayba, I don't believe 'mastering the ego' serves any deep spiritual purpose; it is the ego's goal, after all. If you're talking about Self-Actualization, that's still completely different than Self-Realization, although it isn't necessarily as ego-centric.

The ego is not what you are, essentially. If it was, there wouldn't be topics like this one; the ego could have no chance of disappearing. There wouldn't be great religions, saints and spiritual teachers. But these things are already part of the world, and although some have been corrupt by others, there will always be the deeper truth from which they arose.

The ego is an illusion, however believable one thinks it is. It is only that, as a human, the ego is more predominant. But the two are really hand in hand.

I think were getting into some word mis-communication here. It sounds like this thread has different concepts of the ego and what it is. So before I go on, I just want to say, words are imaginary. We just make some monkey noise, doodled some abstract symbols, and collectively pretended it means something. So what ever meaning you want to give to a word, you might as well be right.

But, for the sake of communicating concepts, I think its important to separate the ego from individuality. The ego is not the individuality. It only thinks it is. And the biggest egos around, aren't "ego-centric" people like super pop stars. No, the biggest egos around belong to people who remain in victimhood, blaming everyone and everything else for their problems.

Originally Posted by really

ChaybaChayba, I don't believe 'mastering the ego' serves any deep spiritual purpose; it is the ego's goal, after all. If you're talking about Self-Actualization, that's still completely different than Self-Realization, although it isn't necessarily as ego-centric.

The ego is not what you are, essentially. If it was, there wouldn't be topics like this one; the ego could have no chance of disappearing. There wouldn't be great religions, saints and spiritual teachers. But these things are already part of the world, and although some have been corrupt by others, there will always be the deeper truth from which they arose.

The ego is an illusion, however believable one thinks it is. It is only that, as a human, the ego is more predominant. But the two are really hand in hand.

The ego has a predefined structure, similar in all of us. It is exactly figuring out the structure of the ego that turned people into saints and spiritual teachers. This structure, is what we call our belief system.

Depending on our beliefs, we will do certain actions, each action is preceded by a belief. Actions turn into habits, which make up our personality. And blaming everyone and everything else for problems, is also caused by a belief. Either you can trace back that belief, change it, or you can "kill their ego". What I'm trying to point out is, that "killing the ego", "ego-death" is not explaining us anything, as in, how do you do it?

i dont think the ego is the individual consciousness of a person, just the mask they use in order to fit into this mad world.

- Anatta means no-self, no-soul, no-being. He not only denies the ego, he denies every possibility of the ego; otherwise, the ego is so cunning it will go on coming back again and again. It will find subtle ways to catch hold of you. It will come in the name of the self; in fact it will come very loudly in the name of the self.

This makes me kinda sad.